Reality Staffers Ready for a Health Care Checkup

Reality Staffers Ready for a Health Care Checkup

Article excerpt

Top reality tv producers are looking to do business with Obamacare. No, not for a competition show - although surely there's potential - but as an employment benefit for the thousands of freelancers who work for independent producers in unscripted television.

Health care is a top issue for the Nonfiction Producers Assn., a trade group launched in July by eight production companies, with industry vet Rick Feldman as exec director. Membership as of October is up to 31 banners (and counting), and as such, the NPA is reaching the critical mass of employees that the Affordable Care Act is designed to address.

The goal is for the NPA to help member companies sort out how to provide coverage for the more than 11,000 freelance writers, editors, producers and other staffers who move in and out of jobs on various unscripted shows every year.

"The idea is that employees would be able to go from one of our companies to another with portable health care," Feldman said. …